Argument for the existence of spirit

[methylatedghosts]

This is an argument I'm going to begin to develop for the existence of spirit/soul/whatever you wanna call it. It came to me today as we were discussing dualism today in class.

I just would like some help pointing out holes in the argument and such as we go along, as I know some of you are VERY good at that

Ok, to start.

As far as I know, we have 4 dimensions

Vertical
Horizontal
Depth
Time

Would it not be possible for another dimension which I will call the "spiritual dimension" that exists in the same point

The dimension of time you cannot feel, taste, smell, hear or see. The spiritual one, you can also not feel, taste, smell, hear or see.

The basis for dualsim is that the physical and spiritual interact. If a spiritual thing exists in the same point as me, that is a part of me, and exists in a separate "spiritual" dimension, you won't be able to sense it, but it'll be there and effect the physical. In a similar sense, time has an effect on us.


Ok, away you go. I'll try and keep a regular post in to reply and TRY to counter the holes all you people poke into it =D

[bernee51]

Bernee you wrote:

Actually i would suggest (respectfully of course) that it is our 'soul' which is the interface with the 'spiritual', and the mind develops the 'soul' under influence from the 'spiritual'

I agree Bernee. I said "mind" because I thought “soul” might engender some unwanted argument.

It may still.

I’m glad you recognize the "soul".

What you call 'soul' and I call 'soul', while having commonalities may be very different.

A soul entails all thought, intellect, emotions, memories, hopes, dreams, aspirations, suffering, loves, joys, hates, sorrows, regrets, creativity, spite, knowledge, learning, understanding, empathy, sympathy, pity, greed, lust, desire, initiative, and instinct of each and every human. More so, of every organism that has mental faculty. As I mentioned in a previous post, it is an emergent phenomena of a being’s mental faculty. Which in turn is an emergent phenomena of the brain’s neural network. Ergo, it is mortal. It exists while we exist, and when we die it perishes. And it is constantly evolving, i.e. changing over time.

That’s interesting. I haven’t thought of that. Spiritual with no God. I’m just curious, What kind of position or belief is that?

Spirit, as it applies to an individual human, is separate to (i.e. an entity in its own right) but inclusive of all that makes up our (individual) existence. It is the structure and process of our being. It is the way we live our lives. Further to this there is a structure and process in my relationship with, for example, my wife. There is a ‘spirit’ to our relationship which we can both access, draw from and add to, either in ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ ways. Same for the community. The ‘spirit’ of the individual interfaces with, draws from and adds to, the spirit, the structure and process of the community. Sometimes in dramatic ways - Christ or Hitler, but usually in infinitely small but not necessarily insignificant ways – like me, you and the vast majority of humanity.

Spiritual practice for me can only directly affect that which is closest to me – my individual spirit. That is not to say that changes in my spirit will not have an affect on other aspects of spirit. (To change the world, first change yourself). Spiritual practice advises me in my understanding of the nature of our existence. Spiritual practice should be transformational – not just change the way I view things but change the way I think and live my life.

Spirit – like all existence is in a constant state of flux – it is evolving.

[joer]

A soul entails all thought, intellect, emotions, memories, hopes, dreams, aspirations, suffering, loves, joys, hates, sorrows, regrets, creativity, spite, knowledge, learning, understanding, empathy, sympathy, pity, greed, lust, desire, initiative, and instinct of each and every human. More so, of every organism that has mental faculty. As I mentioned in a previous post, it is an emergent phenomena of a being’s mental faculty. Which in turn is an emergent phenomena of the brain’s neural network. Ergo, it is mortal. It exists while we exist, and when we die it perishes. And it is constantly evolving, i.e. changing over time.

Spirit, as it applies to an individual human, is separate to (i.e. an entity in its own right) but inclusive of all that makes up our (individual) existence. It is the structure and process of our being. It is the way we live our lives. Further to this there is a structure and process in my relationship with, for example, my wife. There is a ‘spirit’ to our relationship which we can both access, draw from and add to, either in ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ ways. Same for the community. The ‘spirit’ of the individual interfaces with, draws from and adds to, the spirit, the structure and process of the community. Sometimes in dramatic ways - Christ or Hitler, but usually in infinitely small but not necessarily insignificant ways – like me, you and the vast majority of humanity.

Spiritual practice for me can only directly affect that which is closest to me – my individual spirit. That is not to say that changes in my spirit will not have an affect on other aspects of spirit. (To change the world, first change yourself). Spiritual practice advises me in my understanding of the nature of our existence. Spiritual practice should be transformational – not just change the way I view things but change the way I think and live my life.

Spirit – like all existence is in a constant state of flux – it is evolving.

I like what your saying here Bernee. It seems pretty unique in it's conceptual makeup. Is there school of thought these ideas come from? Have you developed them yourself from your own readings and experiences?

Are you saying the Soul ends with our death. But the spirit including the effects of our interaction with Spirit continues on after our death? Does the spirit contain something representative of our unique personality? For example would your personality and your wife's personality be personally represented in spirit? Would any of the interactions or the effects of your interactions of your physical life be retained in spirit?

Very interesting perspective Bernee! I glad you shared them with me.

I want to let you know I have very similar beliefs but within a somewhat different framework. And most likey with quite a different backround of spiritual evolution.

Peace be with you my friend.

[bernee51]

I like what your saying here Bernee. It seems pretty unique in it's conceptual makeup. Is there school of thought these ideas come from? Have you developed them yourself from your own readings and experiences?

The ideas and definitions result from a combination of reading, meditation and self-inquiry. As far as I know there is no 'school of thought' that represents these concepts.

Are you saying the Soul ends with our death. But the spirit including the effects of our interaction with Spirit continues on after our death?

That is exactly what I believe. The spirit that incorporated my physical existence no longer uniquely exists. However the universe continues on, the universe has structure and process and therefore spirit. As I am/was part of the universe, whatever influence my existence had on spirit persists.

Does the spirit contain something representative of our unique personality? For example would your personality and your wife's personality be personally represented in spirit?

Only in so far as whatever change we have effected on spirit...it would not have a unique identifier.

Would any of the interactions or the effects of your interactions of your physical life be retained in spirit?

Would you agree that the interactions of the physical existence of say, Jesus or Buddha have been retained in spirit? If them, why not all - albeit perhaps without as obvious an effect.

Very interesting perspective Bernee! I glad you shared them with me.

You are welcome anytime Joer.

I want to let you know I have very similar beliefs but within a somewhat different framework. And most likey with quite a different backround of spiritual evolution.

Spiritual evolution is continuous.

Peace be with you my friend.

Et cum spiritu tuo.

[joer]

Et cum spiritu tuo.

Thanks Bernee and with your spirit also.

See what you think about these Bernee:

This one reminds me about your idea of the cessation of “soul”. And the survival or your interactions with spirit in terms or it’s enhancement of Universal spiritual value.

When the continued embrace of sin by the associated mind culminates in complete self-identification with iniquity, then upon the cessation of life, upon cosmic dissolution, such an isolated personality is absorbed into the oversoul of creation, becoming a part of the evolving experience of the Supreme Being. Never again does it appear as a personality; its identity becomes as though it had never been. In the case of an Adjuster-indwelt personality, the experiential spirit values survive in the reality of the continuing Adjuster.

This is a little different than anything you’ve expressed, but similar in the context of the all pervading never ending Spirit you mention.

P.81 - §6 Everything taught concerning the immanence of God, his omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience, is equally true of the Son in the spiritual domains. The pure and universal spirit gravity of all creation, this exclusively spiritual circuit, leads directly back to the person of the Second Source and Center on Paradise. He presides over the control and operation of that ever-present and unerring spiritual grasp of all true spirit values. Thus does the Eternal Son exercise absolute spiritual sovereignty. He literally holds all spirit realities and all spiritualized values, as it were, in the hollow of his hand. The control of universal spiritual gravity is universal spiritual sovereignty.

Again different than what you mention but similar in the concept of a Spiritual Realm. You wrote: “Spiritual evolution is continuous.”

P.83 - §2 Viewed from the personality standpoint and by persons, the Eternal Son and the Deity Absolute appear to be related in the following way: The Eternal Son dominates the realm of actual spiritual values, whereas the Deity Absolute seems to pervade the vast domain of potential spirit values. All actual value of spirit nature finds lodgment in the gravity grasp of the Eternal Son but, if potential, then apparently in the presence of the Deity Absolute.

I believe you mentioned the spirit being behind everything. This talks about aspects of the mind of value being spritized and ever lasting.

P.84 - §2 The spiritual-gravity pull of the Eternal Son constitutes the inherent secret of the Paradise ascension of surviving human souls. All genuine spirit values and all bona fide spiritualized individuals are held within the unfailing grasp of the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son. The mortal mind, for example, initiates its career as a material mechanism and is eventually mustered into the Corps of the Finality as a well-nigh perfected spirit existence, becoming progressively less subject to material gravity and correspondingly more responsive to the inward pulling urge of spirit gravity during this entire experience. The spirit-gravity circuit literally pulls the soul of man Paradiseward.

You mentioned something like this in only things of spiritual enhancement value surviving after the death of the mind. This is a similar concept about only prayers of value being recognized.
P.84 - §6 Conversely, if your supplications are purely material and wholly self-centered, there exists no plan whereby such unworthy prayers can find lodgment in the spirit circuit of the Eternal Son. The content of any petition which is not "spirit indited" can find no place in the universal spiritual circuit; such purely selfish and material requests fall dead; they do not ascend in the circuits of true spirit values. Such words are as "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."

Again another comment outside your concepts of Spiritual reality but worth a look see.

P.136 - §3 The universe is highly predictable only in the quantitative or gravity-measurement sense; even the primal physical forces are not responsive to linear gravity, nor are the higher mind meanings and true spirit values of ultimate universe realities.

This is a bit different than anything you’ve expressed.

P.155 - §1 The universal spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son is amazingly active throughout the central universe. All spirit values and spiritual personalities are unceasingly drawn inward towards the abode of the Gods. This Godward urge is intense and inescapable. The ambition to attain God is stronger in the central universe, not because spirit gravity is stronger than in the outlying universes, but because those beings who have attained Havona are more fully spiritualized and hence more responsive to the ever-present action of the universal spirit-gravity pull of the Eternal Son.

P.162 - §1 Havona exhibits finality of spirit values existing as living will creatures of supreme and perfect self-control; mind existing as ultimately equivalent to spirit; reality and unity of intelligence with an unlimited potential.

This seems to be a similar truth to your value of service to your fellow human being.

P.1112 - §7 3. Salvation from spiritual blindness, the human realization of the fraternity of mortal beings and the morontian awareness of the brotherhood of all universe creatures; the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the ministry-revelation of the goodness of spirit values.

This seems to corroborate your comments of the mind being responsible for soul values.

P.1136 - §1 Always must man's inner spirit depend for its expression and self-realization upon the mechanism and technique of the mind. Likewise must man's outer experience of material reality be predicated on the mind consciousness of the experiencing personality. Therefore are the spiritual and the material, the inner and the outer, human experiences always correlated with the mind function and conditioned, as to their conscious realization, by the mind activity. Man experiences matter in his mind; he experiences spiritual reality in the soul but becomes conscious of this experience in his mind. The intellect is the harmonizer and the ever-present conditioner and qualifier of the sum total of mortal experience. Both energy-things and spirit values are colored by their interpretation through the mind media of consciousness.

P.1136 - §4 Science is man's attempted study of his physical environment, the world of energy-matter; religion is man's experience with the cosmos of spirit values; philosophy has been developed by man's mind effort to organize and correlate the findings of these widely separated concepts into something like a reasonable and unified attitude toward the cosmos.

P.1149 - §5 From spirit potency to Paradise spirit, all spirit finds reality expression in this triune association of the pure spirit essence of the Father, the active spirit values of the Son-Spirit, and the unlimited spirit potentials of the Deity Absolute. The existential values of spirit have their primordial genesis, complete manifestation, and final destiny in this triunity.

Hope you enjoy these Bernee! Peace be with you my friend.!

[Goat]

Easy...by realizing the 'enigma' like 'god' is an internal mental construct.

Good One Bernee! LOL.

Laugh all you like, I am serious.

How we relate to the physical world is all in our mind. The same goes with concepts such as 'self' and 'god'...all in the mind. Constructs.

If you can show they are not I would be only to happy so see the evidence.

Sorry Bernee, I can't show you that they are not. But I can suggest to you that not only is how we relate to the physical world is in our mind. The mind is also our interface with the spiritual world. And just as our mind is formed and developed by it's interaction with the physical world so too is it formed an developed by our interaction with the spiritual world. And both the physical and spiritual worlds are related to the composition of our being so that not only are we interacting with them, we are also part of both the physical and spiritual world.

That is your belief. However, you can not show any evidence. How can you make that claim when you can not demonstrate that there IS a spiritual world?

[bernee51]

See what you think about these Bernee:

I am well aware of urantia and in fact have made a not invaliant attempt to read and understand it. My conclusion is that it is for the most part unintelligible gobbledegook. Making sense of it requires hermeneutic gymnastics that would put Easyrider to shame.

When the continued embrace of sin….

there is no such thing as sin

then upon the cessation of life, upon cosmic dissolution, such an isolated personality is absorbed into the oversoul of creation, becoming a part of the evolving experience of the Supreme Being.

On the cessation of life there is the cessation of life. What ‘supreme being’? – I know of none. There is no need for a supreme being.

Never again does it appear as a personality; its identity becomes as though it had never been. In the case of an Adjuster-indwelt personality, the experiential spirit values survive in the reality of the continuing Adjuster.

An example of gobbledegook.

This is a little different than anything you’ve expressed, but similar in the context of the all pervading never ending Spirit you mention.

Yes the word ‘spirit’ is similar isn’t it.

P.81 - §6 Everything taught concerning the immanence of God, his omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience, is equally true of the Son in the spiritual domains.

And equally false in reality.

The pure and universal spirit gravity of all creation, this exclusively spiritual circuit, leads directly back to the person of the Second Source and Center on Paradise. He presides over the control and operation of that ever-present and unerring spiritual grasp of all true spirit values. Thus does the Eternal Son exercise absolute spiritual sovereignty. He literally holds all spirit realities and all spiritualized values, as it were, in the hollow of his hand. The control of universal spiritual gravity is universal spiritual sovereignty.

It is not possible for spirit, as I understand it and have defined it to be under the control of any ‘eternal son’. That there need be ‘sovereignty’ is a human desire. These words express nothing more than ‘humanness’

I believe you mentioned the spirit being behind everything. This talks about aspects of the mind of value being spritized and ever lasting.

I never said or believe I implied any such thing.

You mentioned something like this in only things of spiritual enhancement value surviving after the death of the mind.

Wrong. All actions affect spirit. Perhaps if I use the word zeitgeist it may make it clearer from a human perspective.

Hope you enjoy these Bernee!

I hold urantia in no regard - t is not even very good literature. Revelatory knowledge is not knowledge - it is rambling nonsense. At least the bible is based in a cultural history and for that reason alone deserves some respect. Urantia deserves no more respect than say the Cthultu Mythos.

Peace be with you my friend.!

assalamu alaikum

[joer]

Goat wrote:

That is your belief. However, you can not show any evidence. How can you make that claim when you can not demonstrate that there IS a spiritual world?

Your right goat! It is my belief. I can make that claim because I could demostrate the existance of a spititual world to someone else who has the same or similar enough belief. I could also make that claim to someone who doesn't believe the IS a spiritual world. But they probably would reject my claim becaus ethey don't accept the basic assumption od "A spiriual world."

Sorry Goat this is one of those things that are for believers only. Luckily it's not anything critical in terms of dealing with daily interactions. All things can go on as normal.

Bernee wrote:

I am well aware of urantia and in fact have made a not invaliant attempt to read and understand it. My conclusion is that it is for the most part unintelligible gobbledegook. Making sense of it requires hermeneutic gymnastics that would put Easyrider to shame.

Oh well, I was just trying to find something that was supportive of some of the things you were claiming about spirit and interaction with spirit. I'm full aware of all the other stuff that didn’t relate to what you said at all.

Part IV of the Urantia Book starting from the birth of Jesus is pretty straight forward and is an excellent story about Jesus EVEN if you believe it's fiction, It's GOOD! And it's not difficult to read at all. I had a similar opinion about the words in the book as you did the first time I tried to read it. It was two years before I picked it up again.

Well Bernee it I find some other text with ideas similar to yours I'll let you know. Cheers my friend!

[QED]

joer, you've already owned-up to having no uncertainty in your belief about there being some kind of a "supreme being" and I think you've also got to admit that there's an awful lot of detail tied up with that belief. Do I take it you have an equal amount of certainty in the majority of those details?

I'm quite prepared to admit to a degree of uncertainty in all my beliefs including my core belief that there is no sentience behind this universe that we find ourselves in. I hold this belief because none of the arguments that have been presented to me thus far establish a requirement for such an entity. There are numerous alternative cosmological models that are capable of delivering the "same goods" and leave nothing extra in the way of a mystery. I can understand how it is most likely an observational selection effect that creates the appearance of our living in a finely-tuned, tailor-made world. And it also becomes understandable why said world can unleash such dreadful misfortune upon people whether they deserve it or not.

Now the kind of detail that I believe in is the material detail that science can identify. There's quite a lot of it, and it goes an awful long way to explain the things that are most immediate to us. I'm pretty sure that your book will acknowledge the attempts (no doubt described as feeble) of human investigators to understand the mechanisms of the natural world but I seem to recall that it advises against trying to look "too far behind the curtain" to where the stage-hands create the appearance of some kind of magic. But this is the problem -- when we study the most primitive nervous system we can find (like the one in the Paramaceum I linked you to earlier) we can see the beginnings of things like "how animals get their meaning from the world". I've also given you reasons why we should expect to see things like morals and ethics, emotions and feelings, and just about everything else emerge quite naturally from Game Theory and the effects of Natural Selection as it predisposes behaviour in ways that create adaptations towards survivability.

In very few places in all this detail are there yawning "gaps" that leave us helpless for an explanation -- that's not to say there aren't gaps all over the place, but we we can interpolate the data (e.g. as in our deductions about the fossil record) by identifying sound working principles that mesh with what we do have. I wouldn't even class Abiogenesis as a "helpless gap" that we must go poking behind the curtain to find an explanation for because of this.

"Spirit", I'm sure, is something some people imagine drips out of every pore of a "holy place" (like a Church, Shrine or perhaps, graveyard) yet I can dispel any such notion immediately with a simple thought experiment that shows people are only reacting to an internal mental construct -- not something from the environment that they're "tuning in to". Petitioner prayer doesn't work either. God never answers prayers if all possibility of coincidence answering them instead is eliminated. Epicurus summed this up over two-thousand years ago when he argued that men make gods in their own image rather than the other way around and that the gods would not be perfect if our antics or pleas could affect them in any way.

I guess what I want to get over is that if one spends a lifetime prodding and probing at wide range of details to do with everything from human psychology to Quantum Cosmology all roads lead to the human mind as a poor interpreter of the common experience we call reality. There is such a thing as spirit -- fighting spirit, Esprit de corps, Spirit of New Orleans but we can see that these are mobile mental constructs that readily survive the individual without recourse to magic. What need is there for a radically different form of spirit that exists outside the mind? What feature of human experience are we helpless to explain without resorting to your details?

Your earlier reply seemed to imply a belief in a pantheistic kind of God. I know virtually nothing of your book, but if it does indeed suggest that God is in every atom of his creation then I think you have a job on your hands working out what it means for God to embody everything from a gleaming razor-blade or a Hydrogen Bomb to a Supernova.

[joer]

QED great post! Thank You. I'll put your words in Quotes.

joer, you've already owned-up to having no uncertainty in your belief about there being some kind of a "supreme being"

Yes I did.

and I think you've also got to admit that there's an awful lot of detail tied up with that belief. Do I take it you have an equal amount of certainty in the majority of those details?

Well I don’t know about that QED. My belief in God can be quite simple and sublime. The details around that belief are rapped around my efforts, knowledge and exposure to other’s ideas who hold similar beliefs in trying to contemplate, fathom and understand what God and all God’s influences are. And the details are in constant flux an ever changing reality that is affected by the evolution of the conceptual frames and perspectives through which we understand and realize God around, in and through us.

So while God is constant the details of our understanding of God are constantly changing and maturing in normal non-catastrophic evolution. You throw in a major upset or catastrophe to civilization and knowledge and then we regress, go backwards in our understanding and profound discernment of what and who God really is.

I\'m quite prepared to admit to a degree of uncertainty in all my beliefs including my core belief that there is no sentience behind this universe that we find ourselves in.

OK

I hold this belief because none of the arguments that have been presented to me thus far establish a requirement for such an entity

.

The entity is not required. And there certainly would be required of us no arguments to prove the existence of the entity to the entity itself. “I am that I am.” All the arguments are only for the edification of ourselves, the human species.

There are numerous alternative cosmological models that are capable of delivering the \"same goods\" and leave nothing extra in the way of a mystery.

Well not exactly \"same goods\". Apparently they don’t include the existence of a “Supreme Being”. I would say they are missing the most important part of the \"same goods\".

I can understand how it is most likely an observational selection effect that creates the appearance of our living in a finely-tuned, tailor-made world.

Also it appears to be an observational selection that attempts to understand the entity that your model fails to represent in your eloquent and convincing presentation.

And it also becomes understandable why said world can unleash such dreadful misfortune upon people whether they deserve it or not.

I may differ a bit on the point. It (unleashing such dreadful misfortune upon people whether they deserve it or not) should never be rationalized to the point of acceptance. There should be nothing standing under or supporting such a thing. It should be ostracized from our sphere of cognition as if it never existed until for all intents and purposes it IS as if it never existed.

Now the kind of detail that I believe in is the material detail that science can identify. There\'s quite a lot of it, and it goes an awful long way to explain the things that are most immediate to us.

Yes it does. And “it” (the material detail that science can identify) serves us for now. But experience dictates that soon (in a cosmological time frame) “it” be abandon for and/or adapted to new concepts, ideas and discoveries of material reality.

But God is the one constant, absolute, constantly and infinitely diverse creatively renewing “Being". And just as we evolve materially so do we spiritually and ultimately the majority of us have that innate desire to join with (become one with) this amazing being that we see as responsible for our own creation. We want to experience the fullness of self. “I am that I am”. I mean if Popeye the sailorman gets it…why not us!

I\'m pretty sure that your book will acknowledge the attempts (no doubt described as feeble) of human investigators to understand the mechanisms of the natural world but I seem to recall that it advises against trying to look \"too far behind the curtain\" to where the stage-hands create the appearance of some kind of magic. But this is the problem -- when we study the most primitive nervous system we can find (like the one in the Paramaceum I linked you to earlier) we can see the beginnings of things like \"how animals get their meaning from the world\".

Well first of all I don’t have a "book". I’m not a writer. But I do reference various books and internet sites as well as a wealth of personal experience. All of these things along with a dose of intuition, creativity, perspectives, lectures, influences from many sources will come into play in a myriad of discussions I carry on throughout the day with a multitude of people.

On some sites or groups of people I use the bible almost exclusively, with some only the book of Mormon, with others only Jehovah witnesses text. On one site I use almost strictly respected Catholic sources. On another site or thread Summerian clay tablet translations, others the Koran and Islamic material. Some historical discussions. Some genealogy texts. On one site the Urantia Book is the focus. In this case in this thread I introduced text from TUB for Bernee because I had remembered references that reminded me of concepts that Bernee mentioned that he held about spirituality.

So just as you reference the internet sites for the Paramaceam data and mention here the Natural Selection and Game theory info that we discussed before , I do the same with references I feel pertinent to the discussion.

I\'ve also given you reasons why we should expect to see things like morals and ethics, emotions and feelings, and just about everything else emerge quite naturally from Game Theory and the effects of Natural Selection as it predisposes behaviour in ways that create adaptations towards survivability.

That’s true you did.

In very few places in all this detail are there yawning \"gaps\" that leave us helpless for an explanation -- that\'s not to say there aren\'t gaps all over the place, but we we can interpolate the data (e.g. as in our deductions about the fossil record) by identifying sound working principles that mesh with what we do have. I wouldn\'t even class Abiogenesis as a \"helpless gap\" that we must go poking behind the curtain to find an explanation for because of this.

Well I disagree here. As I mentioned previously about the detail you refer too as being without “yawning gaps” actually is constantly changing over time. And science through the scientific method is exactly what brings us to new understandings and redefinitions of the same phenomenon we previous defined in detail and extrapolated and deduced from. And as we discover these new understandings we apply them to our overall understanding of reality. I mean you agree with that don’t you QED?

\"Spirit\", I\'m sure, is something some people imagine drips out of every pore of a \"holy place\" (like a Church, Shrine or perhaps, graveyard)

Not exactly! Through new discovery Spirit is actually thought to be the basis of even the most commonplace things. Recognizing Spirit as energy and matter as the slowing down of energy until it coaleses in various forms. Spirit as now seen by physicists who “believe” and extroplate and deduct even as you do, but following different ideas is involved in everythings that exists in God’s Creation. As a matter of fact there’s speculation that nothing can exist that isn’t based in and affected by Spirit. And that is very similar to the ideas Bernee was expressing about Spirit. I’m sure Bernee will be quick to point out the differences bewteen what I say and his ideas, BUT my question to him is, “Can he see the similarities?”

yet I can dispel any such notion immediately with a simple thought experiment that shows people are only reacting to an internal mental construct -- not something from the environment that they\'re \"tuning in to\".

Let’s see!

Petitioner prayer doesn\'t work either. God never answers prayers if all possibility of coincidence answering them instead is eliminated. Epicurus summed this up over two-thousand years ago when he argued that men make gods in their own image rather than the other way around and that the gods would not be perfect if our antics or pleas could affect them in any way.

Right! Well my experience is that Prayer is very powerful. And it’s Spirit that is the medium that contributes to it’s power. Sorry Bernee if that’s not exactly what you think. But you might try contemplating it and even petitioning the Spirit you acknowledge if it might be true. But if your not sincere, forget it, that’s one of the prerequisites of effective prayer.

I guess what I want to get over is that if one spends a lifetime prodding and probing at wide range of details to do with everything from human psychology to Quantum Cosmology all roads lead to the human mind as a poor interpreter of the common experience we call reality.

I’ll agree with that.

There is such a thing as spirit -- fighting spirit, Esprit de corps, Spirit of New Orleans but we can see that these are mobile mental constructs that readily survive the individual without recourse to magic.

If you can see that, “that these are mobile mental constructs that readily survive the individual” Why is it that I can see that spirit is that BUT also so much more? And why is it that the majority of humanity can see “Spirit” as more than that also? Is it possible you are missing something?

What need is there for a radically different form of spirit that exists outside the mind?

No need at all, other than to recognize a reality that so many people have talked about and explained and defined for so many thousands of years about the realities that still exist “outside the mind”.

What feature of human experience are we helpless to explain without resorting to your details?

You don’t have to resort to my details. Discover your own. That’s the way it’s done. Pay attention to the things that aren’t concretely explained yet recognized and sensed by so many people. Don’t deny people their experiences or try to explain them away with a cognitive material reality lacking in the explanation of the materially and spiritually unknown

Become a Dialectical materialist. Remember Martin Heidegger's “What is a Thing” ? Phenomenology? Hegel’s dialectics?

A thing is everything we can think of that it is. AS WELL as the potential reality of what it is becoming. It’s not just what we know it also everything that it will become or that we will recognize that it is at some future date. So the dialectical material reality of a chair may have the reality of being wood, once a tree, a particular type of tree, a structure for sitting on, a structure for reclining on, perhaps serve as a stool to stand on, maybe it’s a throne for a royal purpose, or perhaps it’s made of metal, or certain alloy of metal, maybe it could be a lift seat, a tram seat. A bus seat, a boatsman chair, a captain’s chair. Etc. etc. etc. So the most complete reality of the chair are all these things AS WELL as what we haven’t seen, remembered or discovered yet as the ultimate reality of the chair. Now none of those references are from TUB they are from another book. Freud, Herman Hesse the novelist, Jung with his almost 30 books were all familiar with this type of thinking and it served them and the nineteenth century very well.

The point is QED there are tremendous gaps between the knowledge we know and what hasn’t been discovered yet. And astute minds realize that. So even though you wrap things up so eloquently you have to look beyond the pretty package to see what’s next. What will we learn next? What will the next discovery tell us? How about this new planet 21 light years from here. Wouldn’t it be exciting if it really did have life on it? I was already thinking, how will we get some communication to them at faster than light travel? When we will discover that? If we sent a probe at the close to a quarter of the speed of light maybe it will get there this century. We wouldn’t want it to crash land on the planet if it’s inhabited would we? Could we put a probe in orbit around the planet from 21ly’s away?

Your earlier reply seemed to imply a belief in a pantheistic kind of God. I know virtually nothing of your book, but if it does indeed suggest that God is in every atom of his creation then I think you have a job on your hands working out what it means for God to embody everything from a gleaming razor-blade or a Hydrogen Bomb to a Supernova.

No problem. Already did that. Spiritual and creative energy under higher intelligence control. Now all I have to do is wait for a physicist who “believes” to discover it. I just heard of Ingram Ginsberg, a PHD in Physics (may he rest in Peace until he becomes active on the next level!) He wrote a Book in the 70’s about Adam and Eve actually being extra terrestrials which had very advance human forms and the uplifting their DNA did to our backwards human forms. Pretty interesting theory. Time will tell QED. Time will tell.

So there you go gentleman, no TUB stuff I wouldn’t want to scare you off. Oh by the way Ginsberg the PHD in Physics read TUB later on in his life and he was impressed with how it discussed scientific ideas that weren’t discovered until after 1955 when it was published. He was also impressed by how it independently corroborated his theories on Adam and Eve, 18 years before he conceived of them.

Peace be with you my friends. And long life and discovery.

[QED]

Hi joer. Thanks for reminding me of the way we both tap into our various revelatory sources. The point I feel most strongly about is related to the capacity of the human mind to invent convincing metaphysical constructs. You must know that literature is brimming over with works of fiction that, even without any pretense of being real, nonetheless creates a kind of reality for countless readers. There's always a sense in which it is impossible to fully divorce such stories from reality and I think this is an inevitable consequence of the way the mind handles all information that it receives.

Let's not forget that I'm arguing that the popular kind of "spirit" most people would recognize is an exclusively internal mental construct...

yet I can dispel any such notion immediately with a simple thought experiment that shows people are only reacting to an internal mental construct -- not something from the environment that they\'re "tuning in to".

Let’s see!

I'm not altogether sure what you mean by "Let's see". I think the average believer in "supreme beings who interact with the corporeal world in order to influence our destiny" would tend to recognise spiritual "hot spots" in ecclesiastical settings or any other environments that trigger associated emotions.

Why shouldn't this thing that is being perceived as "spirit" be another kind of mental construct? On a case by case basis seems to me that all our common perceptions can be accounted for in this way. Now I know they're not exactly the same kind of spirits being debated here, but I've personally dismissed perceptions of evil or ghostly spirits by thinking how I would react to finding myself in the classic graveyard or haunted house scenario (like most people, I would not be altogether unimpressed by my surroundings and would feel a certain amount of discomfort) yet I could discover that I was actually on a film set. Hence it is something generated internally, not externally, that's delivering these perceptions. The same would be true if I sensed some great spirit on entering a magnificent cathedral. The perception would, I've no doubt, be the same if it was in fact an elaborate film-set and not a real cathedral.

This tells me quite clearly that people are prone to over-reading certain cues from their environments -- so while you might wish to argue that we really do pick up on spiritual presences in some genuine instances, I would need far more persuading than I would if these feelings were not so readily synthesizable.

The main problem we have is the asymmetry of our positions here. You, I presume, start from a position of believing in a "supreme being" and are content to treat examples such as this as incidental. I would liken this to the Crop-circle fanatic who contends that, even though we know people armed with rope and planks can reproduce any Crop-circle we've ever seen, a few are the genuine Alien created article. The logic in dismissing this is simply that local, understandable, demonstrations overwhelm the fantastic ones when the two are totally overlapping in their explanatory powers. Is is this an unjustified bias against the extra-natural? For all practical purposes I would argue that it's not.

I would also apply this reasoning to the answering of prayers and coincidence.

Well my experience is that Prayer is very powerful. And it’s Spirit that is the medium that contributes to it’s power. Sorry Bernee if that’s not exactly what you think. But you might try contemplating it and even petitioning the Spirit you acknowledge if it might be true. But if your not sincere, forget it, that’s one of the prerequisites of effective prayer.

Sincerity or not, it seems that when all possibility of coincidence is eliminated, prayer has no measurable effect. This, I understand, has been the finding ever since prayer studies were first carried out. But there strikes me as being a incoherence in this question of prayer anyway -- as some will insist on the regularity and lawfulness of nature as evidence for a supreme law-giver, while on the other hand they will claim that suspensions of those same laws (in answering prayers and creating miracles) should also count for the same.

If you can see that, “that these are mobile mental constructs that readily survive the individual” Why is it that I can see that spirit is that BUT also so much more? And why is it that the majority of humanity can see “Spirit” as more than that also? Is it possible you are missing something?

Of course I might be. But humanity is cut from the same basic template. The earliest of philosophers were all falling over each other as they developed a natural theology out of all the various "designs" apparently to be found in nature. This pre-Darwinian thinking goes back many thousands of years, yet such a firm and persistent belief was founded on what we now understand to be a misconception. I think Evolutionary Psychology also holds the keys to many other misconceptions. That so many individuals have taken things on "face-value" does not lend any weight to your argument with me.

What need is there for a radically different form of spirit that exists outside the mind?

No need at all, other than to recognize a reality that so many people have talked about and explained and defined for so many thousands of years about the realities that still exist “outside the mind”.

The very idea of a "supreme being" is inevitable whether warranted or not. Not only does it provide a satisfying answer to some levels of inquisitiveness, it is also a concept that can confer vicarious power upon its administrators. I can see the power of superstition in my own experience of it. Again it's perfectly clear to me that my brain is wired for it -- I really don't think there's any cosmic connections leading to and from my sock draw, but nonetheless I have a pair of "unlucky socks" that I often conveniently overlook when choosing footwear for the day. If it weren't for the many instances of the human imagination over-reading the world like this I wouldn't be giving you such a hard time over your claims.

What feature of human experience are we helpless to explain without resorting to your details?

You don’t have to resort to my details. Discover your own. That’s the way it’s done. Pay attention to the things that aren’t concretely explained yet recognized and sensed by so many people. Don’t deny people their experiences or try to explain them away with a cognitive material reality lacking in the explanation of the materially and spiritually unknown.

You've got me there. Those things that are not concretely explained are legion yet there is much that is explained. These data-points all lie on a particular curve and the more that are filled-in the clearer the shape of the curve. At no point does it deviate in a way that suggests any anomaly that can only be explained by a higher intelligence. I'll grant you that it's not clear where the start of the curve lies but that, at the most radical, is only amenable to a deistic interpretation.

I appreciate that we've probably been exposed to very different backgrounds. The vagaries of psychology, human perception and counter-intuitive statistical outcomes are undeniable features of the world we both inhabit. It's very hard for me to see the need to go much further than these things to understand the way most people interpret the world. It's not for the want of trying that I cannot join-in with all the celebrations.

Become a Dialectical materialist. Remember Martin Heidegger's “What is a Thing” ? Phenomenology? Hegel’s dialectics?

Sure, there's an undeniable interconnectedness too. But there again:

The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way

Who's to say how it should be interpreted? Not, I think, by those who have shown grave misunderstandings of the mechanisms of nature already.